Dave Willems column: Marketers, know when to ditch sales pitch

Let's face it: consumers can and will control the marketing messages they receive.

They can fast-forward through commercials on DVR, skip ads on YouTube and filter pop-ups while browsing their favorite websites, just to name a few everyday ways to work around the paid stuff. That's what makes content marketing such a smart addition your marketing mix.

With it, you're creating content that potential customers actually seek out and want to find. But the key to developing these types of materials is to back off from the sales pitch. Pieces designed with content marketing in mind should explain, engage and educate, aiming to arm your audience with the facts needed to learn more about your product or service and make an informed buying decision.

A recent report from Chief Marketing Officer Council says that, despite all of the how-to information out there about content marketing, marketers still aren't creating good content. Why? According the article from American Express Open Forum, it's because they're still relying on self-serving sales pitches instead of helpful, engaging content. It seems the hard-sell habit is turning out to be a tough one to break.

Business-to-business content, or B2B, is described as far too often being "blatantly promotional, pushy, uninformed and self-promoting." It's been a while since content marketing first began taking hold in this new digital age, but it still seems we're very much in the infancy stage of doing it well.

The study itself noted that, despite spending 25 percent of their marketing budgets on content creation, most companies lack the necessary strategies, competencies and best practices to effectively engage their markets.

Such information continues to point to a need to develop good content, not just any content. And, for those of you making progress in pushing content out, it's still much work to do because it's critical to fine-tune that quantity of content into quality content. Coca-Cola, for example, has made big headlines in the marketing world with its Content 2020 Project, which has the beverage giant moving from creative excellence to content excellence by the year 2020.

There are a lot of reasons why this is important and not just a bunch of hype or hysteria. We live in an "on demand culture" where consumers can tune in to their demands 24/7 and find the exact information they need through many different modes of technology. There's greater connectivity and consumer empowerment than ever before, which means you have to be out there ? being found.

And, when they find you - if they also find that you have given them worthwhile content, not sales content - it might just lead to some new business.

- Dave Willems is president and founder of Willems Marketing in Appleton. He can be reached at dave@willemsmarketing.com or 920-831-6580.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Dave Willems column: Marketers, know when to ditch sales pitch

Let's face it: consumers can and will control the marketing messages they receive.

A link to this page will be included in your message.

Join Our Team!

If you are interested in working for an innovative media company, you can learn more by visiting: